Catherine’s Education Policy sounds like Reed’s “Life of the Mind”

It is said that education of the masses is the best way to prove society and that is kind of commons sense. Educated people are able to make better decisions in their country, such as being an educated voter in America today and knowing your rights. I agree with that. An educated society is one of the “central tenets of the enlightenment.” (page 104 in Catherine the Great, ASH)

I was intrigued to see that Catherine believed this and wanted education for both sexes as the work of Betskoy was called, General Plan for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes. I was even surprised to see that girls were included in this, albeit that their numbers were low. The quote that made me think of Reed’s life of the mind is on page 105 that goes like this, “vocational education and favoured a general curriculum, taught by arousing the child’s interest rather than by forcing him to learn by heart.” The part of arousing, genuinely getting the child excited about learning rather than just for the grade is something that Reed follows- learning for the sake of learning.

Together Betskoy and Catherine set up a school called the Foundling Homes, in which they took in illegitimate children and babies to teach them from scratch. The way I see it, is that Catherine was building up an army of loyal subjects and these schools did make these children successful. There was so much emphasis that these schools did not use any corporal punishments it almost makes me think that they did, in fact use it. These schools were a huge success, but why did Catherine start so small? Do you think that Catherine’s failure to introduce compulsory education to the villages and serfs was because she wanted to build a loyal subject community?